1. Field
This disclosure generally relates to protection of user application settings from third-party changes.
2. Background
A user may download an application such as a web browser at a client device along with other applications. These other applications may be third-party applications that provide additional functionality to the web browser.
A web browser may be the most accessed application on the user's computer and may include user application settings. During installation, the third-party application may change one or more web browser settings. The third-party application may provide opt-out options to the user, but the user may not notice the opt-out options. This may be because the opt-out options are located deep within the installation wizard screens.
An example browser setting may identify a search engine to use. If the third-party application changes the browser setting to identify another search engine, the user may use the other search engine without noticing. Or the user may be confused because the setting has changed, and the user does not know how to revert back to the original setting. This may also be a security issue because the new “search engine” may display fake search results, and fake auto-completion results may lead to phishing sites.
Further, the third-party application may delete the original setting, and thus uninstallation of the third-party application may not revert the new setting to the original setting. These problems may degrade the user's experience.